My first node got disqualified after 9 months. It was a 5TB node, 100% filled with data.
In my opinion it was a bug that caused nodes not to write any failed audits into the log file under special circumstances. I remember that this bug got discussed in another topic shortly after describing my problems here: 100% Disk workload without any traffic - #22 by jorma
I did provide the log files in my forum topic, but to my dissatisfaction the answer I got from Alexey was that it’s not possible that I have log files after reinstalling the node. He didn’t even look at my log files (link had no clicks at the moment of his answer), he must have been really sure that I’m an idiot (which Iam sometimes, but I’m also a fully certified Linux administrator) haha
He must have completely underestimated my abilities of creating a copy of the log files before deleting the disqualified node.
I then started from scratch and expanded to more nodes with more space. I’m now with 6 nodes and a total of 80TB available space, which filles up very slowly.
The average income after roughly 2 years of running them is $50/month, the electricity is about $20 a month. Money wise this only makes sense if I have to deal with it less than 30 minutes per month. Just by reading the payment model topic this morning I already spend more time.
My total investment for Hardware was about $6000, and I don’t even managed to do a RAID. I planned to secure my nodes with a raid once they made the money to buy the missing hardware for it. But I guess this never will happen.
At this moment I consider stopping my nodes and sell the hardware because I will sell my apartment and start travelling. I would have the option to run my nodes in another place which is about 2000km from where I life, but I kind of doubt that its worth the trouble to move them.